UNICEF, Jigawa Govt Strengthen Partnership To Improve Education, Health Outcomes 

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UNICEF, Jigawa Govt Strengthen Partnership To Improve Education, Health Outcomes 

By: Ahmed Aminu, Dutse

The Jigawa state government says its  partnership with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) is making tremendous positive impact in nutrition,
water, sanitation, health and education outcomes in the state.

This was disclosed by the Permanent Secretary, Budget and Economic Planning, Alhaji Yusha’u Muhammad Jaji in a key note address presented at the end of the yearly review meeting of the partnership, and the 2025 – 2027 work plan.

He said technical and other support by UNICEF contributed maximally to improving the status of the state in the areas of nutrition, water, sanitation, child protection, health, and education, among others.

“Jigawa state government under governor Malam Umar Namadi is very serious on human and infrastructural development. That is why government is up-to-date in all counterparts matters with all development partners”

Alhaji Yusha’u Muhammad Jaji added that “as parts of the Malam Umar Namadi’s efforts to ensure delivery of dividends of democracy, a 12 point agenda was  developed and strictly followed,  and it is yielding laudable results,” he added.

In his remarks, the Chief of UNICEF Kano field office, Mr Rahman Farrah, represented by Mr Michael Banda, the UNICEF education specialist, said the collaboration between the government and UNICEF has achieved a lot in all the working sectors through matured underground support and cooperation.

“We have made tremendous progress in all the sectors, for example education. We reduced the high number of out-of-school children. We made progress in the open defecation campaign in local government areas under water and sanitation projects, reducing the level of malnutrition to mention a few”.

“We also made progress in health, child protection, birth registration and poverty reduction through cash transfer under the social policy programmes,” Farrah said.

On the meeting, he said it was to take stock of the achievements, identify challenges in the previous year and take care of all the environmental changes, as well as identify priorities and bottlenecks impeding the rights of children.

Commenting on the 2025 – 2027 plan, Farrah said prioritises would be given to community engagements to achieve sustainable outcomes.

The UNICEF chief said this is strategic in  encouraging community engagement in view of the local government autonomy.

According to him, UNICEF will focus on the ODF campaign in communities, reduce the number of out-of-school children, upscale immunisation and cut down maternal mortality rate.

“We also want to focus on upscaling group birth registration as part of the child protection programme. In social policy, there is a big divide in terms of poor children, who are at risk of missing out on opportunities.

“UNICEF will focus on those children at the risk of missing out on health and education because of poverty. Through conditional cash transfer, we will reach out to every child.”

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